zaterdag 17 februari 2018

De NAVO

Turks leger begint militaire operatie tegen Grieken

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De Turkse Strijdkrachten lijken naast Afrin een tweede front te hebben geopend, namelijk in de buurt van Cyprus.
Turkije wilt voorkomen dat Griekenland en Grieks-Cyprus zoekt naar natuurlijke bronnen als aardgas de Middelandse Zee.
Het Turkse leger noemt de acties in de Middelandse Zee ‘Operatie Middelandse Zee Schild’.
Het Turkse leger zegt dat het wil voorkomen dat de brandstofwinning in het oosten van de Middelandse Zee mogelijk wordt bedreigd.
Daarnaast luidt de verklaring dat de marine aanwezig is in de regio om de pogingen van NAVO om veiligheid op zee te creeëren te steunen.
Er worden meerdere basissen gebouwd in het gebied. In totaal doen 24 schepen mee met de operatie.

Zionistische Tereur

Verdrijving in slow motion

De documentaire ‘Sumoud’ laat zien hoe Israël het bestaan van een bedoeïenenfamilie in de Palestijnse Jordaanvallei ondermijnt, met de bedoeling dat zij vroeg of laat vertrekt.
Sumoud, de hoofdrolspeelster uit de gelijknamige documentaire.Al-Haq 
De Palestijnse mensenrechtenorganisatie Al-Haq heeft een korte documentaire uitgebracht over een Palestijnse bedoeïenenfamilie in Al-Hadidya, een dorp in de noordelijke Jordaanvallei. Dit gebied is een van de plaatsen op de bezette Westelijke Jordaanoever waar Israël probeert de lokale bedoeïenengemeenschappen het leven dermate onmogelijk te maken dat ze vertrekken.

Standvastig

De documentaire laat zien wat de dagelijkse gevolgen van die politiek zijn voor de familie Bisharet, die al generaties in het gebied woont en leeft van de landbouw en het hoeden van vee. De film is genoemd naar Sumoud, de jongste dochter van de familie. Sumoud (gewoonlijk geschreven als Sumud) is het Arabische woord voor ‘standvastigheid’. Het is een begrip dat grote betekenis heeft voor de Palestijnen, ook voor Sumoud en haar familieleden: hoewel Israëlische kolonisten steeds meer land van hen en andere families inpikken en het Israëlische leger regelmatig hun bezittingen vernietigt, weigeren zij te vertrekken. ‘We zullen nooit opgeven’, zegt Sumouds vader Abd al-Rahim in de documentaire. ‘Onze wortels zijn hier.’
Het levendige jonge meisje Sumoud staat centraal in de documentaire. Ze vertelt hoeveel zij van het leven in Al-Hadidya houdt: de rust, de schone lucht, de bomen, de mensen, de dieren waar ze mee speelt en voor zorgt. Ze vertelt ook over de lange stoffige zandweg waarover zij en andere kinderen uit de gemeenschap elke dag lopen om bij de halte te komen van de bus die hen naar school brengt. Vaak is haar schooluniform vies als ze op school aankomt. Vooral in de winter en als het geregend heeft is de zandweg een modderpoel. De Israëlische kolonisten uit de omgeving hebben de enige geasfalteerde weg afgesloten voor de bedoeïenen.
Sumouds vader vertelt hoe hij en andere bewoners van Al-Hadidya in reactie daarop de zandweg verhardden met grind dat zij uit de bergen haalden. Kort nadat de klus was geklaard verschenen Israëlische militairen met bulldozers om het grind weg te halen en de weg weer onbegaanbaar te maken.

Dorp al zeven maal vernietigd

In de documentaire is op archiefbeeld te zien hoe Israëlische militairen de hutten, tenten, schuren en andere bezittingen van de familie vernietigen. In de loop der jaren is dat al zeven maal gebeurd. Steeds weer bouwt de familie de onderkomens op en steeds weer verschijnen militairen om de boel te slopen. Sumoud vertelt dat haar jonge duiven tijdens zo’n operatie werden gedood en dat de jonge kat die ze verzorgde verdween. Sumouds moeder beschrijft hoe de militairen de tabun, de traditionele broodoven, vernietigden terwijl ze brood stond te bakken.
Vóór de Israëlische bezetting van de Westoever woonde de bevolking van Al-Hadidya een paar kilometer verderop. De bezettingsautoriteiten verklaarden hun woonplaats in 1997 tot militair terrein en de dorpsbewoners moesten in 2003 vertrekken nadat hun protest door de Israëlische Hoge Raad was verworpen. Het tot militair terrein verklaren van gebieden is een veelgebruikte methode om bedoeïenen van hun land weg te krijgen.
Prompt kreeg de bevolking van de bezettingsautoriteiten te horen dat zij ook uit hun nieuwe woonplaats diende te vertrekken. Die zou een ‘agrarische bestemming’ hebben. Ook worden andere excuses aangevoerd om de bewoners weg te krijgen. Zo zou hun nabijheid bij de illegale Israëlische kolonie Ro’i voor ‘veiligheidsproblemen’ zorgen. En in 2011 werden de woningen vernietigd onder het voorwendsel dat ook deze lokatie militair terrein is, hoewel dat volgens de Israëlische mensenrechtenorganisatie B’Tselem nergens is gedocumenteerd.
De politiek van verdrijving in slow motion werkt. Sumouds vader vertelt dat er vóór 1967 meer dan driehonderd families in Al-Hadidya leefden. In 1997 waren dat er nog maar 54. Daarvan zijn er anno 2018 twaalf over. Zij kregen versterking van vier families uit de omgeving van Al-Khalil (Hebron), die uit hun leefgebied waren verdreven. Aan vertrekken denkt niemand. Het traditionele leven in Al-Hadidya is prachtig, zegt de vader. Het boerenleven is niet moeilijk, het is de bezetting die het moeilijk maakt.

Rapporten

Tegelijk met de documentaire heeft Al-Haq twee rapporten over de Jordaanvallei uitgebracht. In een overzichtsrapport documenteert de organisatie hoe Israël daar een onleefbare omgeving creëert en steeds meer Palestijnen tot vertrek dwingt. Vóór de Israëlische bezetting van 1967 leefden er een kwart miljoen Palestijnen in de vallei. Nu zijn dat er nog 53 duizend. Een deel van de oorspronkelijke bewoners werd tijdens de Zesdaagse Oorlog van 1967 op de vlucht gejaagd en wordt sindsdien door Israël weerhouden van terugkeer naar hun land. De resterende bevolking kreeg te maken met de Israëlische dwangmaatregelen en pesterijen zoals die in de documentaire te zien zijn.
Het tweede rapport gaat specifiek in op de gevolgen van het Israëlische optreden voor Palestijnse vrouwen en meisjes. Zij worden extra hard getroffen, onder meer door agressie van de illegale kolonisten.

A Good Day on Wall Street Is a Bad Day for Most American


TD ORIGINALS

A Good Day on Wall Street Is a Bad Day for Most Americans


The stock market recently had one of its worst single-day plunges in history: 1,600 points at one point. All the corporate media heads ran around telling you everything will be OK and not to panic because your bichon frisé puppy still will be able to afford his mani-pedi. But the mainstream media are careful to avoid telling you the censored side of this story.
They’re not telling you that we have an economy that, at its core, is based on death, misery and hardship. It’s not based on health and happiness and life. When it’s humming along, that means our obliteration of the planet is running full steam ahead, and average workers are being appropriately repressed and held down, hoping to collect enough food stamps to papier-mâché a cast on their broken arm. In fact, The Washington Post admitted it this week—but acted surprised when they said it: “Many analysts pointed to a seemingly unusual cause for the turbulence: rising wages.”
No, it’s not an “unusual” cause at all. When we start doing better—when wages start going up–Wall Streeters shit themselves. This is the norm. They only celebrate when we’re fucked, when workers don’t have the ability to demand better wages, better treatment, health care, coffee breaks and less handsy bosses. Stock markets around the world panic when the workers are strong. The stock market is not for us.
According to Time magazine, “The Richest 10% of Americans Now Own 84% of All Stocks.” We’re told to all celebrate how well the market is doing, but it’s just the rich further enriching themselves by playing games with the lives of everyone else. It’s like Monopoly, except we regular people are the players—doing the grunt work, going straight to jail, working on the Pennsylvania Railroad all day and only coming home to a thimble full of soup. The rich are the giant human hands that come down to grab all the money and flick your house off the board.

Over the past year, as the Dow broke 24,000, 25,000 and then 26,000, all the news anchors had on party hats, rubbing their nipples on prime time. Donald Trump tweeted: “Dow rises 5,000 points on the year for the first time ever – Make America great again!” But it wasn’t a rally for us. It wasn’t a rally for the planet or the animals. It was only a rally for the parasites at the top. The regular humans work their asses off and the viruses are the ones reaping the benefits—and not even paying their taxes.
I’m pretty sure I’ve mixed my metaphors, but still, I think viruses should pay taxes. And tapeworms should have jury duty, too.
You want more proof? A leaked 2005 internal Citigroup memo, the parent company of Citibankread: “The world is divided into two blocs – the Plutonomy and the rest … plutonomies are economies powered by the wealthy.” Ajay Kapur, lead author of the report, said powered by the wealthy, but he means exploited by the wealthy. The memo continued: “In a plutonomy there is no such animal as ‘the U.S. consumer’ or ‘the UK consumer,’ or indeed the ‘Russian consumer.’ There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the ‘non-rich’, the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie.”
In 2006, “The Plutonomy Symposium — Rising Tides Lifting Yachts,” another internal memo from Citigroup (see page 155 of “The Zeitgeist Movement Defined“) said: “We should worry less about what the average consumer … is going to do, when that consumer is (we think) less relevant to the aggregate data than how the wealthy feel and what they’re doing. This is simply a case of mathematics, not morality.”
There you go: The rich matter, the non-rich don’t matter. Morality matters to them as much as having skid marks on their underwear. They throw it out and never think about it again.
And then the 2005 memo puts the nail in the coffin: “The three levers governments and societies could pull on to end plutonomy are benign. Property rights are generally still intact, taxation policies neutral to favorable, and globalization is keeping the supply of labor in surplus, acting as a brake on wage inflation.”
Citigroup is saying that the levers of the state cannot stop us, the rich, from doing whatever we want, because we own the government. They’re our gimps on a chain in the basement. In case you’ve forgotten, WikiLeaks emails revealed that Citigroup chose nearly all of Barack Obama’s 2008 cabinet. They told him exactly whom to pick before he even became president. And Trump also has surrounded himself with Citigroup and Goldman Sachs affiliates. Makes you wonder if Citigroup could have tested out its power and been like, “For secretary of Housing and Urban Development, we need you to choose Carrot Top. Sorry, yeah, it has to be Carrot Top. That’s all we’ll accept.” And then that night, they’re all giggling to themselves in a boardroom in New York: “Oh, my God. He did it. What an idiot.”
Right about now you’re thinking, “But Lee, when the stock market goes down, it hurts productivity. It hurts the GDP.” Well, first of all, average Americans are not benefiting from the productivity gains. In 1968, the minimum wage was $1.60. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “If the minimum wage had continued to move with average productivity after 1968, it would have reached $21.72 per hour in 2012. … If minimum-wage workers received only half of the productivity gains over the period, the federal minimum would be $15.34.”
According to the Economic Policy Institute, “In 2007, average annual incomes of the top 1 percent of households were 42 times greater than incomes of the bottom 90 percent (up from 14 times greater in 1979), and incomes of the 0.1 percent were 220 times greater (up from 47 times greater in 1979).”
Workers’ lives didn’t get better with productivity. Wall Street steals more and more of the money and gives less and less to the worker. The bottom 90 percent then fight over the scraps and hate each other for it. “Hey! Why do teachers get to have health care while the rest of us don’t? Fuck you, teachers! What have you ever done for society? I’m voting for whoever is taking the health care away from the teachers.”
The gains. Go. To. The. Top.
While the stock market has soared, 41.2 million Americans are food insecure, meaning they are forced to skip meals or eat less at meals, and that includes 12.9 million children. How can anyone say we are a successful country while an eighth of our population is food insecure? Sounds to me like you don’t know what words mean.
How do we rate success? We look at Gross Domestic Product—how much we’re producing. GDP doesn’t measure how many kids are drinking toxic water or breathing toxic air. It doesn’t measure how many dolphins are choking on plastic beer rings. It only measures how many beers you chug down. It doesn’t measure how many trees were planted. It measures how many trees we cut down to make the cardboard for coffee cups and condom boxes. It doesn’t rate how screwed the environment is, just how much stuff we buy to keep screwing. Buy a dildo? Good for the economy. Throw an old dildo out? Ends up in the ocean, gets stuck in a whale’s blowhole. GDP doesn’t care.
In China, the government builds “ghost cities”—massive cities where no one lives, because the act of building them is good for GDP. Of course, it’s disastrous for the environment, but who cares? It’s good for GDP. GDP doesn’t measure how many animals went extinct. It only measures how many animals we ate or sold. You could be eating a bald eagle roasted with giraffe bacon wrapped around it, but as long as you bought it at the store, it’s good for GDP. And besides the fact that our factory farms are basically government-subsidized pig and cow concentration camps, animal agriculture is the No. 1 cause of greenhouse gases. More than cars. So the No. 1 thing you could do for the planet is to eat less meat.
Recently a pledge to eat less meat has been signed by half a million people. It doesn’t even say no meat. It just says, “Take a breather. Slow down a little. Let the last ham hock get all the way down your throat before you stuff the next one in. Give it a second.” GDP is a measurement of destruction in a system that demands infinite growth on a planet with finite resources. Gross Domestic Product: We are the product, and it’s gross.
One country does it differently: Bhutan. It measures Gross National Happiness. I agree that that sounds like something singer Meghan Trainor would call her new tour with opening act The Wiggles. But still, it’s not a bad idea. Gross Domestic Happiness makes sense. If we’re not trying to get happiness and sustainability for the most people, then what are we doing? Isn’t that supposed to be the point of this ridiculous existence on this tiny spark of galactic light? Anything’s better than just measuring production and consumption. Gross Domestic Comfort, Gross Domestic Orgasms, Gross Domestic Roof Over Your Head, Gross Domestic Dude Not Working Two Jobs and Never Seeing His Kids and Can Afford a Movie Popcorn Without Putting His Daughter Up as Collateral. Any of those would measure our society better than Gross Domestic Product.
I mean, if that’s not the point, just let me know and I’ll get on board. Oh, the point is to make sure a tiny number of individuals can afford to purchase their own islands with helicopter landing pads? Oh, I had no idea that was the meaning of life. I’m sorry I’ve been resisting it so long. In that case, the stock market seems to be working perfectly.
Ecologically, our economy is killing the planet. That’s not up for debate. Imagine the aliens that come down here after we’ve eaten everything, killed everything, and turned it all to dust. Imagine them showing up and going, “What happened to these little fellows that used to be here?”
“Well, they imagined something called the stock market, where nonliving entities called corporations compete to see which one can exploit the earth the most. It eventually swallowed up the whole biosphere they lived on.”
“Oh, which corporation won?”
“Ironically, the one called Amazon, which used to be the name of the largest river in the world until they paved it.”
Here’s the thing: The stock market is life-blind. It’s also death-blind. It’s misery- and starvation- and destruction-blind. It doesn’t see people or happiness or art or beauty. It sees only profit, which means it is a cancer of our system of values. It’s like a guy driving a car and only seeing speed, being completely blind to how many people he runs down. He’d get to his destination in record time and say to the townspeople, who all had family members run over by this maniac, “We did it. I got here in record time. We should all celebrate together.”
One percent of America is celebrating. It’s time to do things differently.


Investors withdrew $6.3 billion from U.S. junk bond funds

REPORT: Investors withdrew $6.3 billion from U.S. junk bond funds

How did your stock portfolio and mutual funds fare during last week’s volatile sessions? It was a roller coaster ride, and it is likely just a glimpse into the near future.
But it was so bad that a particular market took quite the beating: junk bonds.
According to Bloomberg, investors sold $6.3 billion from U.S. high-yield junk bond funds, which is the second-largest amount in history – the biggest, $7.06 billion, occurred in August 2014.
In total, it was the fifth straight week of outflows, as more than $15 billion worth of junk bonds have been withdrawn. This represents the longest consecutive period, and it could be a sign of things to come.
It was also reported that U.S. government mortgage funds posted outflows of $182 million, U.S. corporate investment-grade funds experienced outflows of $790 million, and municipal-bond funds witnessed outflows of $443 million.
Henry Peabody, a money manager at Eaton Vance Corp., told the business news network:
“The narrative is really becoming more about inflation and rate risk creeping into the broad markets. Investors are likely to hit the silk fairly quickly.
It’s hard to think of elevated volatility in both rates and equity not eventually seeping into credit. Investors are waiting for the markets to settle down.”
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Lasting Peace on the Korean Peninsula

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From PyeongChang to Lasting Peace on the Korean Peninsula

By Hyun Lee
Global Research, February 16, 2018

Url of this article:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/from-pyeongchang-to-lasting-peace-on-the-korean-peninsula/5629448

Perhaps the most moving moment in the opening days of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics was when Kim Yong-nam, the president of the Presidium of North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly, quietly wiped his tears as North and South Korean singers sang in unison at a concert celebrating the winter games. South Korean k-pop star SeoHyun held hands with North Korean singers as images of tearful North-South family reunions played in the backdrop of the finale of the North Korean Samjiyeon Orchestra’s historic performance in Seoul on February 11. As the concert came to a close, they sang, “Be well, let us meet again. Go safely, let us meet again,” and waved their hands as the audience waved back and Kim silently wept.
Sometimes, art can point to answers that the stuffy logic of policy wonks cannot. Those who have truly felt, even for a passing moment, the pain of seventy years of artificial national division, probably felt a stir in the pit of their hearts at seeing the ninety-year old North Korean statesman’s rare display of emotion. The sense of excitement at the fleeting inter-Korean reunion, followed by pain and sorrow at not knowing when or if the two Koreas will ever meet again, is shared by Koreans on all sides of the division. And therein may be the answer to the perpetual and seemingly unresolvable conflict on the Korean peninsula. That shared sense of longing for reunification will ultimately prevail over threats of maximum pressure and a “bloody nose strike.”
Prospect for North-South Summit
Kim Yong-nam, accompanied by Kim Yo-jong, the vice deputy director of the Central Committee of North Korea’s Worker’s Party and sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, sat next to the South Korean First Lady and President Moon Jae-in at the concert. He reportedly turned to President Moon and said,
“As we have created opportunities for exchange of ideas and frequent reunions in the future, I am hopeful that we shall meet again,”
to which President Moon reportedly replied,
“Let us foster the spark created by our meeting.”
The day before, the North Korean high-level delegation had met with President Moon at the Blue House and delivered an official letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un proposing an inter-Korean summit in the near future. If realized, the meeting would be the third inter-Korean summit following the historic meetings between former leaders Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il in 2000 and Roh Moo-hyunand Kim Jong-il in 2007. It is safe to assume that as long as the North and South remain in talks and continue to mend relations, the North would refrain from further testing of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. And a North-South summit could pave the way for peace talks between the United States and North Korea.
There is a precedent for this. In 2000, then-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung traveled to Pyongyang to meet with the North Korean head of state. Then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-il personally greeted Kim Dae-jung at the airport, and after three days of meetings, they produced the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration, which outlined shared principles for peaceful reunification. The summit was followed by a series of North-South ministerial and military working-level talks as well as reunions of separated families in Pyongyang and Seoul in August 2000. South Korean President Kim Dae-jung received the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the summit.
On the heels of the historic summit, the United States eased sanctions on North Korea, which reciprocated with a pledge not to flight-test its long-range missiles. Just four months after the inter-Korean summit, in October 2000, North Korea’s Vice Marshall Jo Myong-rok traveled to Washington and met with then-President Clinton. They signed the US-DPRK Joint Communique, which stated that in light of the “changed circumstances on the Korean Peninsula created by the historic inter-Korean summit,” both sides agree to “remove mistrust and build mutual confidence” based on the principles of “respect for each other’s sovereignty and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.” U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright subsequently traveled to Pyongyang to pave the way for a summit between Kim Jong-il and then-President Clinton. This took place during President Clinton’s last days in office, and he unfortunately ran out of time to make the summit a reality. The momentum toward rapprochement was then quickly scuttled by George Bush Jr, who scrapped all agreements with North Korea as soon as he took office.
Almost two decades later, we have another rare opening for peace. If the North and South are able to build on the momentum of good will from their cooperation in PyeongChang, they could, once again, reunite separated families and resume cross-border economic cooperation. They could also create the conditions for detente and talks between the United States and North Korea. The main obstacle, as plainly exhibited in PyeongChang, however, is the obstinate Trump administration, unwilling to veer off its warmongering path.
Ugly Behavior at the Olympics
On his way to PyeongChang, U.S. Vice President Pence met with Japanese Prime Minister Abe in Tokyo on February 7, then vowed to “unveil the toughest and most aggressive round of economic sanctions on North Korea ever.” As if waging a one-man protest, Pence then toured South Korea’s Navy 2nd Fleet Command in Pyeongtaek, where he met with North Korean defectors. He prompted international rebuke after he sat dour-faced and refused to applaud during the Unified Korean team’s introduction at the opening ceremony of the Olympics. That’s not all. After arriving fifteen minutes late to a reception for world leaders hosted by President Moon, Pence made an awkward point of shaking everyone’s hands except for those of Kim Yong-nam, then decided to skip out on the dinner altogether to avoid sitting across from the North Korean official.
In lock-step with Pence, Japanese Prime Minister Abe, too, tried to rain on South Korea’s parade. He caused a commotion by ordering an inspection of underground parking garages around the PyeongChang Olympic Stadium in preparation for evacuation of Japanese tourists in the event of a North Korean missile attack during the winter games. At a meeting with Moon on February 9, he insisted South Korea resume its joint Key Resolve Foal Eagle military exercise with the United States after the Olympics. He also demanded South Korea uphold the “final and irreversible” bilateral pact on the comfort women issue and remove statues of comfort women that have been installed in several countries, including the United States, Australia and Germany. In reply, Moon essentially told him not to meddle in South Koreas’s “sovereignty and internal affairs” and suggested that Japan instead ought to reflect on history. This fraught exchange was probably fresh in Moon’s mind as he watched Hyun Song-wol, the leader of North Korea’s Samjiyon Orchestra, in a surprise performance in the finale of the February 11 concert, revise the lyrics of a North Korean song to sing, “Dokdo, too, is my country” (referring to the contested Dokdo/Takeshima Islands between Korea and Japan in the East Sea).
US-led War Games: the Greatest Obstacle to Peace
The United States and Japan are currently conducting joint military exercises even as the Winter Olympics are still ongoing. The dock landing ship USS Rushmore, with elements of the U.S. 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (SDF), concluded five days of amphibious landing exercises off the Southern California coast on February 7. The annual Cope North exercise, involving more than 100 aircraft and 2,850 personnel of the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy, as well as the Japan Air Self-Defense Force and the Royal Australian Air Force, began on February 14 and will take place in Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands through March 2. The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force and the US Navy will also hold a four-day computer-simulated joint missile defense drill on board Aegis destroyers starting February 16.
Key Resolve Foal Eagle, the joint US-ROK war games that happen every year in the Spring have been delayed this year due to the Olympics but are scheduled to resume in April. Ulchi Freedom Guardian, another massive joint military exercise, is scheduled for August. These exercises are offensive war games. Last year’s Foal Eagle involved 300,000 South Korean and 15,000 US troops, including the notorious SEAL Team six, the unit that assassinated Osama Bin Laden. It also involved B-1B and B-52 nuclear bombers, F22 and F35 stealth fighters, as well as an aircraft carrier and a nuclear submarine. These exercises rehearse OPLAN 5015, a war plan that includes special forces assassinations, contingencies for North Korea’s regime collapse, preemptive strikes, and the so-called Korea Massive Punishment & Retaliation (KMPR) battle plan, which involves surgical strikes against key North Korean leadership figures and military infrastructure.
The upcoming military exercises pose the greatest obstacle to efforts for peace and North-South reconciliation in the current moment. If they move ahead as planned, North Korea will almost certainly respond by resuming nuclear and/or ballistic missile tests. Moving forward with the joint war games, in other words, is the surest way to undermine the process of detente that has begun between the North and South through their Olympic cooperation.
A North-South summit that can pave the way for talks between the United States and North Korea is our only chance at peace on the Korean peninsula. It is essential, therefore, for those who desire genuine peace in Korea to raise a unified voice urging the White House and the Pentagon to halt the provocative joint war games and support the Korean initiative for dialogue. Let us nurture the seed sowed in PyeongChang to take root for lasting peace.
*
All images in this article are from the author.

by Michel Chossudovsky
Available to order from Global Research! 
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
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Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.


Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article.

Copyright © Hyun Lee, Global Research, 2018